The whole Musk charade seems to be starting to crumble. Personally when I see folks driving teslas I can't divorce it from my image of him, and I end up having a negative opinion of that tesla driver I don't even know (why would they follow / prop up this guy?). I suspect tesla may go the way of facebook... One generation loved it, but for young people they run the other way.<p>Sad part is that tesla has some of the smartest, most hardworking engineers in the industry... absolutely top-notch. But, the reason they chose that job was due to a belief in the mission, of doing good in this world. I can't help but think those people are having second thoughts about working at tesla now that people are starting to recognize Musk actually is a bad smell.
Musk only appeals to people who are looking for hope.<p>If your life is going great or you can find source of hope in either music, your sports team, your future projects, religion, your love life etc. then he has nothing on you.<p>The degree of cult that he managed to ammass is telling that people are desperate for hope and can't find it in the usual sources, so they resort to techo-utopian politics
The fact that Musk doesn't promote or even allow non-Tesla owners to charge electric vehicles at Supercharging stations demonstrates his tendency for monopolization, at the expense of mass electric vehicle adoption rates. Musk would sooner see his employees living and dying on Mars than fix carbon emissions on Earth.
Given that a 5minute charger might/will kill people if misused, battery swapping might be the only option that satisfies long haul driving. It’s possible material science will deliver an 8hr freeway battery, but that might require room temp superconductors or some other to-discover technology.<p>Drive up, swap, drive away while the battery is then charged in the 30-60 min super charger. Might also reduce the problem of all those chargers and power infrastructure yet to build out.
Tesla doesn't spend money on marketing because Elon/his Twitter/his antics are the marketing. Not sure why you'd trust him at face value to begin with. He's not your friend, he's a door-to-door electric vacuum salesman trying to sell his wares.
He is essentially Trump, except DJT had the guts to stand to China, alebit in a chaotic and messy way.<p>Musk wants to be a wrestling star with a toxic fanbase in the US, while being submissive to CCP and Xi over there.
While Musk is a controversial character it should be noted that Slate is owned by Bezos (and formerly by Gates) and may not be the most reliable source on this on this topic since Musk and Bezos battle each other in several realms and are not friends.